


moonfall

by wbtrashking



Series: moonfall [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male My Unit | Byleth, werewolf/lycan AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wbtrashking/pseuds/wbtrashking
Summary: There’s a towering hulk of a beast looming in frame of his son’s bedroom, a singular gold eye gleaming in the apartment’s soft, low lights. A mangled scar across the beast’s right eye belies the truth of its history, a scrappy stray that Byleth has made the choice to take in.Jeralt shakes his head. “That thing is huge.” It looks more wolf than dog, watching them with a too-intelligent gaze. “Girl or boy?”“Boy. His name is Dimitri.”“Strong name,” Jeralt remarks. He would kneel down and encourage Dimitri to come over so that he can pat his head, but he gets the distinct impression that doing so would result in having his fingers be ripped clean from his body by the beast’s sharp teeth. “You picked it?”“He told me,” Byleth hums, speaking in the same no-nonsense tone he always does, leaving Jeralt to stand there with a hand on his hip, simply shaking his head in bewilderment.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: moonfall [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850098
Comments: 14
Kudos: 163





	moonfall

**Author's Note:**

> i finished fe3h for the first time yesterday and it's consumed my soul; anyways, rip in pieces @ myself  
> enjoy! ♡

His father has the _look_ on his face, like he’s fully aware that his son is hiding something, but he can’t quite suss out the depth of the secret. Byleth has always been unreadable, even as a quietly-babbling infant.

For now, he settles for leaving the documentation on the table, quirking an eyebrow when he hears the soft click of animal nails on the hardwood. There’s a towering hulk of a beast looming in frame of his son’s bedroom, a singular gold eye gleaming in the apartment’s soft, low lights. A mangled scar across the beast’s right eye belies the truth of its history, a scrappy stray that Byleth has made the choice to take in.

Jeralt shakes his head. “That thing is huge.” It looks more wolf than dog, watching them with a too-intelligent gaze. He’s never been one to question Byleth’s desire for some format of friendship and companionship, or previous lack thereof, but then again, he supposes the boy _is_ nearly thirty. He can’t fault his son for taking pity on the large, wounded creature. Byleth has always adored broken things. “Girl or boy?”

“Boy,” Byleth answers, refusing to patronize the poor thing warily eying them from afar. “His name is Dimitri.” His green eyes go soft as he says it, leading Jeralt to wonder exactly how long the creature has called this place home. Judging by the raw welts across Dimitri’s pelt and the glimpse of stained bandages wrapped around one of his paws, it hasn’t been long.

“Strong name,” Jeralt remarks. He would kneel down and encourage Dimitri to come over so that he can pat the creature's head, but he gets the distinct impression that doing so would result in having his fingers be ripped clean from his body by the beast’s sharp teeth. “You pick it?”

“He told me,” Byleth hums, speaking in the same no-nonsense tone he always does, leaving Jeralt to stand there with a hand on his hip, simply shaking his head in bewilderment.

He loves his son, but Jeralt wonders if maybe his hands-off approach to parenting had been the best thing for him, all things considered.

* * *

For the most part, Dimitri is a quiet houseguest.

It’s hard to miss his heavy footfalls, his bulk landing on the wood as he wakes. Nails click on the floor as he sniffs around, checking for— _something_ , Byleth assumes. Byleth, for his part, wakes up at seven o’clock sharp, like clockwork, the sunlight spilling in through the windows of his open-concept loft.

His father had created quite a name for himself as a carpenter, and had similarly trained his son to work wood. The practice had suited both of them well, two quiet souls in desperate need of something, but Jeralt had never known what, exactly. Since the day his wife had been hit by a car, nearly taking their son with him, the boy born with a faint heartbeat and a mile-long vacant stare, he’d simply been trying his best to make things work, to keep them alive.

Jeralt isn't a particularly patient man, and he doesn't have the head for numbers. However, his son, eerily wise beyond his years, had fixed up an old write-up sheet for his boss at the tender age of ten, and since that day, he's let their household finances be handled by the boy. When Byleth had turned sixteen, he had asked the stone-faced youth if he’d be more interested in helping Jeralt craft a business as a contractor than sleeping through his boring high school curriculum. Byleth had said yes, promptly dropping out without a second thought, taking to the task like a fish to water.

There are a lot of code regulations to read through, dozens of emails to send, and several phone calls, but Byleth handles all of that swiftly, wasting no words. Every afternoon at lunch time, he closes his laptop and pads over to the fridge, taking out large hunks of venison he orders from Petra and Leonie’s butcher shop. Dimitri cleans the dish each day, but Byleth doesn’t know if it’s enough—he’s a very large animal, after all.

He never complains, so Byleth figures his meager tributes are fine.

After a handful of days spent like this, very little about his routine changed except for the ever-present feeling of being stared at by his wary houseguest, Byleth cautiously approaches to change Dimitri’s bandages, offering him a small smile, taking a moment to relish the soft feeling of the fur beneath his hands. “I’ll need to pull out your stitches tomorrow, and then you’ll need a bath. I bet you look beautiful when you’re clean, hmm?”

At that, Dimitri does something like snort, or close enough, and the noise only makes Byleth chuckle in response.

* * *

He’d found Dimitri lurking around the backside of a bar, fighting off six or seven men armed to the teeth. Byleth had simply ducked into the alleyway to take a shortcut, preferring the quieter path to the heights. He’d been momentarily stricken stiff to realize that switchblades had been branded against such a wild man, blonde hair glued to a pale face, a knife sticking out of the cavity where there should have been an unblemished eyeball.

Byleth’s father, who Byleth had determined to be well-acquainted with a life of crime, given how readily he’d prepared his son to face danger, had trained him for such situations. Byleth never left home unprepared.

He'd reached into his satchel for pepper spray, incapacitating the blonde’s first opponent, prying the highly-illegal knuckle rings off of the man’s limp fingers before using them to crack the jaw of the second man dogpiling the stranger.

Dimitri, who'd gained a second wind when given such a serendipitous chance, had snapped his teeth, tearing out the jaw of whoever it was that’d had the misfortune of locking their arms underneath the blonde’s pits.

The two of them, mangled and covered in blood, stood there for a moment before Dimitri grabbed his wrist, a blue glow shimmering in their wake. Byleth could've sworn that he'd seen a set of ears disappear from the top of the blonde's head. When he'd chanced a glance over his shoulder, he'd been startled to discover that their scene of carnage had similarly faded out of existence.

After they'd broken away from the bustle of the inner city, Byleth finds himself leading Dimitri into the confines of his apartment, where it becomes immediately obvious that Dimitri is _enormous_. Byleth isn’t short, but Dimitri has a good six or seven inches on him, and given how broad the other man’s shoulders are, he has a sort of presence, a gravitas.

“You need stitches,” Byleth says, making for the bathroom before Dimitri clutches his wrist again, his grasp hard enough to bruise.

With a lone icy blue eye glaring down at him, Byleth stops for a moment, watching as sweat rolls down Dimitri’s face. “You should be terrified. Why aren’t you asking any questions?”

Byleth shrugs. “You’re probably going to pass out from blood loss any second now. I don’t see the point.”

Before Dimitri can wrangle out a snarl and defend himself, Byleth swiftly elbows the taller man in the neck, handily incapacitating him. As promised, he passes out, though not by natural means—he’d already been careening to the floor anyhow, eyelids drooping. Byleth had simply sped up the process and saved both of them the trouble of an unnecessary conversation.

Byleth is as surprised as he isn’t to find a dog—or a wolf, rather—lying on the couch in the morning, bandages and stitches in all the same places where Dimitri’s had been last night. Byleth had wrangled the hulk of a man into the tub before going through the egregious labor of scooping the same man out of the bath and putting him on the couch. He’d given Dimitri a shirt and an old pair of ratty gym shorts to sleep in, but finds that they’ve been shucked to the floor.

“My fur is warm enough,” Dimitri explains, his clipped baritone slipping from vocal chords that should not, by any means, be able to form words. “What is your name, human?”

He sounds oddly contentious towards someone who saved his life, or, at the very least, helped him from sustaining more fatal wounds. “Byleth. And you?”

“Dimitri,” the wolf replies, slipping onto his hindquarters, his lone eye a piercing gold in this form. “I did not require assistance. It’s harder to use magic to erase things when someone with no power interferes.”

Byleth rolls his eyes. “Could’ve fooled me,” he mutters to himself. He’s met men like Dimitri before—reckless, looking for a place to die. His father’s drinking companions have the same haunted look to them. “My bad, I guess. I figured you wouldn’t want to go to the hospital.”

Dimitri studies him like a specimen, tail idly thumping against the hardwood. “Your assumption was correct.” He trots around, sniffing the fabric of the couches before moving to the window, staring out at the grimy street, seeming almost pleased by the lack of a view. “I’ve been separated from my pack, and those men had subpar information as to their whereabouts. At least until I heal, it would be advisable for me to stay in one place.”

Byleth puts a hand on one hip, his gaze flat and unimpressed. “You don’t seem the type to do things that are good for you.”

The magical wolf-human barks out a laugh, a sound nearly akin to a hyena’s wheezing. “No, I have never been credited as such. Still, I must admit that you’re quite curious. You still haven’t asked me anything.”

“I asked you for your name,” Byleth corrects him, dodging around Dimitri’s looming furry form to make his way to the kitchen. He feels the hot breath of Dimitri’s snort against his jeans. The sound makes Byleth smile. “You don’t want really to tell me, so why should I bother wasting both of our time?”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything in response, simply keeping a watchful eye on his new companion, silently attempting to size Byleth up.

* * *

Dimitri doesn’t speak to Byleth after that first night, and he doesn’t turn back into a man either. Byleth gets the impression that he’s conserving energy, only perking up when it’s time to eat, spending the remainder of his waking hours lazily watching Byleth go about his day.

Three weeks turn into four, and it’s the middle of the night when Byleth wakes up to piercingly loud wails and howls. Dimitri still isn’t speaking, building his magical reservoir back up or _whatever_ , so Byleth is left hurrying into the living room, green eyes seeking out the bulk of fur, noting the way Dimitri’s dark lips are curled in fury, tears streaming down his muzzle. Byleth sinks to his knees to draw the wounded beast closer to him, murmuring sweet nothings into his fur.

“Shh, shh,” he coos. “It’s safe here, Dimitri. It’s me, Byleth.”

He presses his cheek to the thick white patch on Dimitri’s chest, listening to the frantic pace of Dimitri’s heart as the wolf-human slips back into awareness, away from the treacherous clutch of his nightmares. He lets out a weary sigh when Dimitri’s tongue tentatively lathes at his neck, a sign of the fugue passing.

“You scared the shit out of me, I swear.” Dimitri does look appropriately ashamed of about waking Byleth up, so Byleth lets up on his chastising, idly scratching at Dimitri’s ears until he grows a little less tense. “Would you like to come to bed?”

Dimitri balks at that, shaking his head wildly. Byleth laughs at that, covering up his mouth to disguise his positively wicked amusement. He suspects, if Dimitri had been in his human form, he might have been blushing.

“I just thought you could use a friend,” Byleth explains, stretching his back as he stands. “If you’re next to me when you have nightmares, at least I don’t have to go and find you.”

He doesn’t know if it’s magic, or if he’s just gotten used to the solemn look in Dimitri’s golden eye, but he can practically read all the thoughts running through the wolf-human’s head. He despises losing control like this, of imposing upon Byleth even more than he already has, eating the man’s food and taking up his space, haunting the rooms like a spectre.

Byleth doesn’t care. It’s two a.m., and right now, he doesn’t have the patience to deal with Dimitri’s saga of self-recrimination. “The offer still stands, if you ever decide that you want to join me.”

* * *

Dimitri warms to him from that point on, actively seeking out Byleth’s attention. He grows to become fussy about the meals Byleth leaves, desiring more variety, though Byleth stubbornly refuses to feed him much beyond fresh meat and vegetables until Dimitri is ready to _talk_ to him about his preferences.

It’s like this that the days blur into weeks, and two months after their fateful meeting, Byleth feels heavy paws sink into the mattress, the huge weight of Dimitri’s bulk tentatively coming to rest beside him.

Sleepily, Byleth puts a hand on Dimitri’s ribs. He’s put on some weight since their first meeting, which is good. For how toweringly tall he is, he’d looked wrung out and off-kilter, somehow, stocky but too wiry. “Hey.”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything, not that Byleth expects him to, but he does nuzzle into Byleth’s arms with a pleased little noise, like a warm hug is what he needed all along.

* * *

Three months into their impromptu cohabitation, Dimitri sits at the kitchen table naked, apparently above, or unconcerned with, wearing clothes.

No matter. Byleth isn’t fazed by his nudity. He makes coffee and puts a few slices of sourdough bread in the toaster oven to complement his breakfast power scramble. When he’s finished at the stove, he reaches in the cupboards, asking if Dimitri would like a cup. The blonde says yes, murmuring a soft request for cream and sugar. It takes Byleth a couple of trips to bring everything over, and when he finally takes a seat, he takes in Dimitri’s human form in all its glory with an approving eye.

It’s been a while. He’d forgotten how classically handsome the other man is, even though his pale skin is littered with mottled old scars.

Byleth is glad that the wound across Dimitri’s face has healed well, though he’d been forced to cut the organ free from the connective tissues to ensure that the cavity wouldn’t have become infected. He suspects that Dimitri’s semi-hibernating magical nonsense helped matters along, given his lack of proper medical care.

He’s not cruel—he passes Dimitri a plate, hoping his tastes suit the blonde’s because he didn’t bother making anything else. “Good morning,” Byleth says at last, scooping a forkful of eggs, bacon, and potatoes into his mouth.

Dimitri offers him a sloppy sideways smile in reply, his features awkward and stiff, almost like he isn’t used to using his facial muscles in such a way.

Byleth supposes the theory holds water, because Dimitri hasn’t been human for over a season.

They eat in peaceable silence, and when Byleth makes to tidy the table, Dimitri stands up to do it instead, uncaring of his loose junk as he scrubs the dishes clean. When he’s finished, he pads behind Byleth into the living room, still looking every bit like a mangy wolf, though he’s much broader now, and he’s not nearly as hairy.

He bows his head slowly. “My full name is Dimitri Alexandre, a lycan of the Blaidydd Faction. Well, not that my faction assignment means anything to you.” Dimitri’s tone is bitter, and a wry smile tugs at his lips, slowly growing used to showcasing expressions as a man rather than a beast, though he shows too many teeth, and they slip out of his lips a bit, too large to be fully sheathed. Slumping back against the couch cushions, he wiggles, letting his tail slip out alongside his ears, fur growing idly out on his forearms. “I can’t stay upright for very long—within seven to ten days, I assume I'll be right as rain. Still, this is better than I could have hoped for. The full moon must be near.”

Byleth hums, flicking on his phone for a moment. He checks, finding that Dimitri is right. It’s only three days away.

Dimitri nods, letting out a knowing little grunt. “If I let more of the beast out, I can likely manage an hour or two. Apologies for my state of undress. I didn’t want to ruin any of your clothing.”

Byleth frowns, shaking his head. He makes a mental note to buy Dimitri some of his own apparel the next time he’s in town. “I wouldn’t have minded. It’s nice to talk to you again.” He doesn’t mention that he feels like they communicate just fine, with or without words; Byleth doesn’t want Dimitri to misinterpret what he means.

“As I briefly mentioned before, sometime last winter, I was forcibly separated from the rest of my pack.” Dimitri snarls, jaw still tense at the memory. “Hunters, looking for challenging new game, or perhaps witches, eager to witness the downfall of our kind.”

Byleth sips at the dregs of his cold coffee, careful to hold Dimitri’s steady gaze as the blonde speaks. Better that than letting his eyes wander to the frankly monstrous thing lying in Dimitri’s lap, sitting idle and exposed, as though Dimitri is aware of how well-endowed he is and doesn’t care about his natural proportions in the least. “I would think that hunters would know better than to mess with wolves, especially those as large as you. They’re endangered, and besides, it’s obvious that you’re… _different_.”

Dimitri stares off into the middle distance, mind a million miles away. “The hunters I refer to are more easily likened to the ilk of van Helsing and his kin,” he explains, fists balled up against his thighs, his whole body taut with barely-restrained anger. “Mystics, thrill-seekers, the disruptive. Guns are easy to purchase these days, and it’s even easier to use the internet to research the unknown. Few people believe in that which they do not witness firsthand, but there is always a glimmer of truth to the stories.” He forces himself to relax when Byleth splays a familiarly warm hand across the planes of his shoulders, leaning into the touch while closing his eye, a Pavlovian response. “We have worked with the humans for years to reach some sort of a truce, and nowadays, many people adore making up stories about my kind. _Werewolves_ , they call them. How quaint.”

Byleth quirks an eyebrow. “You don’t like that?”

Dimitri huffs. “I suppose that is better than being called a lunatic, or moon-drunk. I am a wolf at heart, more beast than man. I do not feel compelled to transform with the shift of the moon cycles. Just as the pull of gravity keeps the moon tethered to the earth, and so too has life risen from the ocean, we feel a sense of gratitude to that which grants us the ability to inhabit this planet.” Byleth’s not much for poetry, but it immediately becomes obvious to him that Dimitri is. Dimitri notes the surprise in Byleth’s eyes, chuckling deeply at his own semantics. “I do not mean to be so lyrical, but I have always been enamored with the legends.”

He smiles up at Dimitri. “Fair enough.”

After pausing for a moment, Dimitri flicks his lone blue eye up at the ceiling. “I’ve always been the largest of the pack. It had always been my duty, honor, and privilege to protect the others. The hunters came in the middle of the morning, when I was on watch, so I did everything I could to let them escape. Unfortunately, they have always been a fiercely loyal bunch, and even at my most vile, nothing I could do or say scared them away from trying to help me break free.”

Byleth fills in the gaps. “They got captured,” he says, coming to the natural conclusion of Dimitri’s tale.

He hangs his head. “I failed.” A broken sob leaps out of his throat, and already his human form is receding, long, pale feet giving way to lithe and limber wolf legs. “I tried to make them hate me, and I failed at that too. If my actions have gotten my pack killed, I swear to everything below and above that I’ll take the head of their murderer before taking my own life in recompense.”

With his venomous words released into the atmosphere, Dimitri falls asleep on Byleth’s lap, the shorter man left alone in the quiet of his loft apartment with his anger lingering heavily in the air like a smoke bomb.

* * *

Dimitri spends another week gathering his strength and his magic, and, armed with the handful of outfits Byleth purchased for him, he looks decent. His hair is pulled into a loose clip, a soft cotton eyepatch covering the right side of his face. He looks handsome, if somewhat tortured.

Byleth puts a hand against Dimitri’s jaw, still unused to looking up at the blonde. “If you ever find yourself back in the city,” he says, “you know where to find me.”

The blonde nuzzles into his palm like he had in his wolf form, sparing a moment to reach up and cradle Byleth’s hand against his face, so tenderly, so carefully, like Byleth might break if he clasps too tightly. “I did nothing to deserve you.”

Byleth shakes his head. “You don’t have to _deserve_ me. I’m your friend.”

Dimitri’s responding smile is small and sad. “Is that all we could ever be?”

Byleth presses his lips to Dimitri’s cheek. “Until you find room in your heart for something other than revenge, then I suppose it is.”

Just as easily as Dimitri trotted into Byleth’s life, he slopes back out of it, fading into a blur in the shadows. When Byleth blinks, the blonde is gone.

* * *

Jeralt invites his son over to the house for the holidays and he’s honestly surprised to read the open gloom on Byleth’s face.

Byleth is moping. _Byleth_ , who hadn’t batted an eyelash when he’d broken his own arm in the second grade, or cried when his favorite relative, his aunt Rhea, had died—is sighing on the couch, absently scrolling through his phone and listlessly picking at his food.

He’s never been good at this. At times like this, he misses Sitri like the very air in his lungs. “So,” Jeralt awkwardly says, clearing his throat for the pretense of having a formal father-son conversation. “Get your heart broken or something, kid?”

Byleth blinks up at him. “Yeah,” he says, voice airy and lips lilted upwards in a grim smile. “I suppose I did.”

 _Okay,_ Jeralt quickly decides, _that’s enough of that_. Clearing his throat again, he attempts to change the subject. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring that big mutt of yours with you. You put him in a kennel?”

For some reason, _that_ makes Byleth just as miserable as Jeralt’s probing about his forlorn, would-be love life. “He had somewhere else he needed to be, so he left,” Byleth explains, as incomprehensible and guileless as ever.

Jeralt shakes his head, deigning to finish the rest of his mashed potatoes in silence, mercifully praying for the week to end faster.

* * *

Byleth enters his apartment and immediately notices that something is off. There’s a breeze rolling in from the patio door, and he’s certain he hadn’t left it open; his hackles are immediately raised.

He steps on something furry and soft as he creeps forward, making the poor creature yelp in pain. “Sorry,” Byleth hurriedly apologies, flicking on the light with his heart hammering in his chest. “Are you okay?”

“Fuck, that hurt,” a voice that decidedly does _not_ belong to Dimitri says, but it rises from the throat of a wolf, nevertheless. “You Byleth?”

Byleth nods dumbly, because what else can he do? That is his name, anyways, for what it’s worth.

“Felix,” the new dark-furred wolf drawls, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “Delighted to meet you.”

Another wolf pads over to them, bashing their nose into the side of Felix’s head. “Stop being a jerk,” a higher voice says, fur charmingly golden and silky. “I’m Ingrid. Dimitri talked about you all of the time, so we’re all pretty excited to meet you.”

Byleth feels woozy. He hasn’t seen or heard from Dimitri in a year—why now? He feels hazy, buzzing with nerves, both good and bad. “Where _is_ Dimitri?”

Another wolf emerges from the shadows, their fur a splotchy mix of brown and a gorgeous copper. He slips between Byleth’s legs, sniffing shamelessly at his groin. “He’s being shy.”

Byleth can’t believe it, given the gall of what Dimitri has let his pack do. Flatly, he says, “After he broke into my place in the middle of the day and let all of you crash here?”

Another gray wolf, peeking at them from the further corners of Byleth’s dining room, has a high, tinkling laugh. “To be fair, we were in our human forms at the time, but he said you wouldn’t mind seeing us like this, and we’re all still tired. It's more comfortable for us this way.”

Distantly, Byleth thinks he’s going to have a hell of a time hiding this from his landlord, whether they’re wolves or not.

Byleth creeps around the seven creatures in his apartment to windingly make his way to the bedroom. There, curled up on Byleth’s mattress, with the same old scar across his face and a dozen new ones sprinkled across his pelt, is Dimitri. His ears are slightly perked, giving himself away. “You’re a terrible actor,” Byleth says, flopping down on the mattress with a wide smile.

Dimitri flicks his eye open, golden now in his wolf form, tongue lolling out of his mouth while he tries playing dumb a moment longer. “Woof?”

“If you don’t transform and let me kiss you in the next five minutes, I swear I’ll kick your ass,” Byleth warns him.

Dimitri quickly obeys, flushed all the way up to his ears as he bashfully curls into Byleth’s hold. “You promise?”

Byleth huffs. He’ll deal with the slew of Dimitri’s messy kinks and repressive tendencies later. For now, he has other matters to attend to.

* * *

Breakfast is a rowdy affair, with a cast of characters making merry at his too-small table, the eight of them happily eating Byleth out of house and home.

Dedue, a sturdy and solemn sort, goes through the motions of explaining the circumstances to Byleth, who knows nothing of wolf packs and factions beyond the very, very slim details Dimitri had mentioned to him once upon a time ago.

Ashe, Mercedes, and Annette are giggling rapidly in the background, and Dedue says they are the newest additions to the pack, a group of orphans and stragglers estranged from the Kingdom at a young age. Ingrid, Felix, and Sylvain, Dimitri’s childhood friends, are all from hearty and hale wolfpacks, thoroughbreds to the core, some facet of whatever passes for wolf nobility, or, in Dimitri’s case, royalty.

“The prince—the _king_ ,” Dedue corrects himself, “has not always been forthcoming with his emotions. He used to be the sort to cling to the ghosts of the past, to ignore us at length in favor of pursuing his revenge against the hunters. In a way, I’m glad we were separated. Meeting you woke up something long forgotten in him, made him more than a beast looking for someone to put him out of his misery.”

Sylvain chimes in, skillfully avoiding an elbow in the side from Ingrid on his left and Felix on his right, clearly used to the madness. “His highness wised up, figured out how to pay for information, like yours truly has been trying to get him to do our whole lives.” Dimitri rolls his eyes, but doesn’t look overly affronted by the scathing remark. “Tracked down some hunters in the north, infiltrated their camps until he found us. Luckily for him, the trappers were more interested in studying our behavior in captivity than selling us to the highest bidder.”

Byleth looks at Dimitri at his breakfast table, being casually ribbed by his friends, his _pack_ , and feels an odd warmth bloom in his chest, the kind that only comes when he’s around Dimitri.

When Dimitri can manage to get his lone eye matched with Byleth’s gaze, he looks like a giddy little boy, for all his height and mass, an eager flush spreading across his cheeks accompanying a tentative little grin.

* * *

Byleth doesn’t know how he manages having an overcrowded apartment with seven extra lycans for two months, but he does, and, amazingly, he’s almost sad to see them go.

Almost, because Dimitri is languidly lounging on their bed absolutely nude, brazenly unashamed about it. He’s let his tail, teeth, and ears come out, his fingers and toes more claw-like than they are in his fully-human form, all because Byleth has told him, at length, how very much he adores the features, his ears especially, because they perk up and flick excitedly when Byleth says his name.

They do promise to come back and visit, but Sylvain and Dedue crucially push for the clingy rest of their pack to get out so the lovebirds can have the nest to themselves. Dimitri sputters at the implication, but does not argue against their point, content to wave goodbye to them while keeping his and Byleth’s fingers entwined.

Here, on Byleth’s bed, two years to the date since he’d first saved Dimitri in the alley behind a restaurant, he has Dimitri’s pretty blue eye trained on him, his tail swishing idly against Byleth’s skin, equal parts anxious and excited about what comes next for them. “You called me your friend, once,” Dimitri whispers, adjusting his bulk as Byleth settles his knees on either side of the blonde’s expansively-scarred abdomen. “Even with all of my flaws.”

Byleth leans down, licking his way into Dimitri’s pliant mouth until the blonde is panting against him, desperate for more. “I also said that I thought you’d look beautiful, if I could wash your fur clean of all that blood,” he murmurs, lips ghosting across Dimitri’s collarbone. “I was right.”

Dimitri looks like glory and legend himself, coming apart under Byleth’s careful deliberations. He squirms for more, and whines, a guttural noise from the back of his throat, bucking his hips and begging for Byleth to do _more, more, more_.

And Byleth obliges, albeit slowly, eager to show Dimitri how much more there can be to them, if he could keep his heart open and let Byleth _in_.

Dimitri came back to Byleth, to give them another shot, to shake the cobwebs of his past out, if only for a moment, and thus, Byleth will do everything in his power to make this place Dimitri’s new home, to welcome Dimitri’s pack here as his own. To pepper the blonde’s skin with kisses, and shower him in affection, to remind him that Byleth knows how much this means, how important this is.

He doesn’t plan on letting Dimitri walk away from him a second time, not when Dimitri, the lycan, the oddity, a strange magical entity in a world of static and the color gray, is the only person who’s ever made Byleth feel so alive.

* * *

_epilogue_

Jeralt hates invading Byleth’s privacy, but it is a workplace emergency, sort of, and besides, Byleth had told him to come over anytime, offering his father a spare key without a second thought.

He openly balks when the door opens before he quite turns the latch, a huge specimen of a man waiting on the other side. He notes the oddly-disheveled quality to the blonde’s hair, like he’s been freshly-fucked, and, most glaringly, his lack of a single scrap of clothing on his body.

“Uh, hi,” the man says, his voice doing little to distract Jeralt from the absolute monstrosity hanging from the stranger’s crotch. “Sorry about—you know what, just give me a second.” Jeralt almost feels bad for how red the young man turns, obviously embarrassed at his point-blank indecent exposure. He tumbles back out of Byleth’s bedroom wearing what look to be Byleth’s shorts, far too tight on this guy with the body of a Greek god. “I was expecting, um, my boyfriend. He just went to the store.”

There are about a thousand things Jeralt has to process in that sentence, but he hates dealing with complicated shit, so he takes the easiest path. “I’m Byleth’s pa. I was just dropping by to leave him some documents for work.” He hadn’t known it was possible for people to turn purple in flushed shame, but this kid is pulling it off. It dawns on Jeralt, suddenly, that he’s having _fun_ teasing Byleth’s boyfriend.

_Heartbreak last year, a lost dog, and a found boyfriend. Will wonders never cease?_

Jeralt leaves the spare on the island. “Here. Figure you’ll use it more than me. Tell him I said hi, and to bring you over for dinner sometime. We’re both shit at cooking anything beyond fish and steak, so if you want anything else, order take out.”

“Yes sir,” the blonde says, burying his face in his hands.

With that, Jeralt saunters out of the apartment, snickering all the way back to his car.

When Byleth returns ten minutes later, Dimitri is howling and whining on his floor in wolf form, sounding for all the world like a miserable creature on its deathbed.

**Author's Note:**

> there's going to be a follow up, extra scene fic in a bit with a lil smut scene because i could NOT figure out how to work into the main plot of this, but. believe me. i wrote this whole mess for that and i will not rest until i make it happen
> 
> thank you so much for reading, i luv u all!!!! ♡♡♡
> 
> →[tumblr](https://quillifer.tumblr.com/) 💓  
> →[twitter](https://twitter.com/quillifer) 💓
> 
> ✮ **edit** : i've done it, fellas, the extra dimileth smut scene is here!!! ✮ _ **[home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532827)**_ , 2.2k✮


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